Thursday, December 20, 2012

19) Exercises EP - CFCF (TOP 20 OF 2012)

In 2009 Mike Silver
wouldn’t have been a wise candidate for keeping electronic music firmly in its
shoes. His debut Continent had engorged itself with a taste of everything the
electronic music scene brought to the buffet, espousing chillwave, downtempo,
IDM, the lot. This year’s Exercises EP not only matches the Mike Silver I’ve
seen spinning, diligently reserved, in the trendier lounges of Montreal, it
inverts CFCF’s adventurousness from of-the-moment chic to 70s futurism with a
post-classical bent. It feels truer to electronic music's past without getting trapped in the kitsch.

What makes this
newfound dry approach work is how Silver’s electronics and piano work never
fully enmesh; the old-school analogs coinciding with his traditional
compositions the way vines curl around woodwork. Complimenting the record cover,
Exercises EP finds two different scales fleshing out an architecture hollow but
reliable, small in stature but deeply impressionable.